We have been talking about the local Sunderland Flying Boats for years in the club, but never actually dived one. Research carried out over the last 6 months had enabled us to pretty accurately locate one wreck and three potential names for the aircraft – PP118, G-AGKY or ML883. This Sunday tides, weather, lifeboats (and a quiet evening in the pub on Wednesday) meant the time was right for a sonar search of the target area.

We launched the RIB from Calshot around noon and on our first pass over the target area we located a 5m high ‘bump’, a couple of quick turns showed we were over something of a descent size! We spent the next couple of hours zipping backwards and forwards taking depth readings every metre or so. From the location of the site, its orientation and its general size it’s quite likely we have found a suitable dive target.

We did a quick run to the second target site and had a look around, but didn’t identify anything in the short time we were there. That’s probably something for next time.